For #BHSM we have 5 copies of You’re the Storyteller: The Surprise (Home Edition) to give away – you can read Brenda’s review below:
Review by Brenda

What we love…

Ease of use, solidly built app, fun storyline that prompts discussion and creativity.

What we’d love to see…

More! Having the opportunity to explore more stories in this manner could replace game night!

Summary

Hamaguchi presents a well-made, fun app that leaves us wanting more.

Our Rating

Hamaguchi Apps, founded by speech-language pathologist and author, Patti Hamaguchi, creates apps for speech, language and auditory development. You’re the StoryTeller: The Surprise, is a brilliantly simple and engaging way to encourage story telling. There is an animated story broken into short sequences with no text or narration. It’s your job to tell the story. Children are encouraged to pay close attention to actions and reasoning so they can share their thoughts. Each sequence has “challenge” words to incorporate in the telling as well as questions to prompt critical thinking. Your child can tell their story by voice narration, text or both. Upon completion, you can enjoy the story your child has created or tell it a new way and record again. Only one story can be saved at a time in the home edition, but up to thirty versions can be saved in the Pro edition.

There was a lot of giggling as my children and I reviewed this app. Not a minute of time felt like work, but every minute was filled with thoughtful consideration for how to incorporate challenge words, create correct sentence structure, and understand why we made certain inferences about character actions. Without giving anything away, there was one scene that my son got so giggly over that we had to go back several times to re-narrate or just plain watch.

Here is where I am supposed to tell you what I would like to see worked on. The app as it stands, is really wonderful and rivals a family game night. What I would very much like to see, are more versions available in the App Store. When we were finished with this review I was ready to buy more. I hope Hamaguchi has plans to make that a reality!

Overall I am really impressed with this app. There was a lot of potential for mishap in the development with either poor base storyline, lagging video or poor options, but Hamaguchi did a superb job. My kids and I enjoyed this app and it would be a pleasure to recommend it to others.

Brenda Shetland is a real-life mother and lover of apps, but her name has been changed to protect the innocent, or at least her email inbox. She is looking forward to reviewing bad apps so she can tell it like it is, but was given a great app to start.

These apps are on a great sale for our #BHSM month event – buy them now or enter to win a copy of the home edition below

Mary is originally from England but now lives in California with her husband, dog, cat and three children. Mary and her family love Apple products and own an iPad2, iPad3, iPad Mini, iTouch, iPhone5 and several MacBook Pros. They also love cub scouts, skiing, camping and hiking. The family iPads are also used for therapy for their daughters Apraxia (speech disorder).

8 Comments

Emily
on May 8, 2015 at 9:33 pm

A fun way to address language skills.

Wassi Chamsy Homeschooling
on May 8, 2015 at 4:35 pm

my daughter loves books

Connie
on May 6, 2015 at 6:07 pm

I would love to use this with my students! I am always looking for activities to increase narrative skills!

Lynne Rockliff
on May 6, 2015 at 7:07 am

Some of my kids have limited language skills, so something to help improve this would be great!

Becky
on May 6, 2015 at 2:02 am

I would love to use this app with my elementary school students to elicit language!

Jackie Perkins
on May 6, 2015 at 12:17 am

I love the concept of making the writing process fun! Often writing is such an intimidating part of the language process. I would appreciate the opportunity to use this with my students!

Eve SLP Happy BSHM!!
on May 5, 2015 at 10:38 pm

I am always looking for great ideas for oral narrative skills. Looks good~!

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Meet the iMums

The iMums - Amanda, Alison, Mary and Grace - are four mothers from different parts of the world dedicated to informing parents about the best digital stories, educational apps, fun games and technology products available for their children. We also offer the latest news in apps for kids, interesting articles, developer interviews, free apps and regular giveaways! Read more.

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